Economic Headdesk Time: Home Sales Worse Than Thought

OK I've gone on about the housing market.  And on, and on.  Yeah, it may not seem very Geeky, but that's a major part of our economic woes the last few years, and a prime study in Industrial Grade Stupid and Wrong.

Well the Stupid was not Industrial Grade, it was even higher Quality: The National Association of Realtors was overcounting home sales.  For five years.

End result?  The housing market, already bad, is worse than we thought.  Oh, and it probably puts other statistics into question.

Your takeaways:

  • A lot of people can't do statistics, apparently including some people whose job it is.
  • The housing market is worse than thought – I'll reiterate my previous claims, I think a recovery may be a decade away.  By then so much will have changed we may not even know it's one.
  • I think this may actually be an honest mistake (that no one was anxious to check for mistakes).
  • This will probably not get a lot of notice.  Unfortunately.
  • On pure progeekery, I think there's a market for good, real data out there since we've seen so many cases of it being done wrong.  Think about that.

Steven Savage